Lord Hawkesbury said, that he did not mean to discuss the question, on
the ground of justice and humanity, as contradistinguished from sound
policy. If it could fairly be made out that the African Slave Trade was
contrary to justice and humanity, it ought to be abolished. It did not,
however, follow, because a great evil subsisted, that therefore it
should be removed; for it might be comparatively a less evil, than that
which would accompany the attempt to remove it. The noble lord, who had
just spoken, had exemplified this; for though slavery was a great evil
in itself, he was of opinion that it could not be done away, but in a
course of time.
A state of slavery, he said, had existed in Africa from the earliest
time; and, unless other nations would concur with England in the measure
of the abolition, we could not change it for the better.
Slavery had existed also throughout all Europe. It had now happily, in a
great measure, been done away. But how? Not by acts of parliament, for
these might have retarded the event, but by the progress of
civilization, which removed the evil in a gradual and rational manner.
He then went over the same ground of argument, as when a member of the
Commons in 1792.
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